A Cheesecake That Celebrates Cannoli

Getting a few thousand Sicilian Americans mad at me is probably not the brightest thing I’ve ever done. Yet the fact is, I never cared much about cannoli from Italian bakeries in Little Italys all across America. Cannoli (the word is plural) were okay, but not special enough to justify the calories.

It was only when I stepped off a ship in the Sicilian port town of Messina
that I let my youngest daughter talk me into walking in search of cannoli. And
it was only when I tasted true Sicilian cannoli, made to order in a pastry
kitchen downstairs from where we sat, that I realized what I had been missing
all along. I will never say nasty things about cannoli again.

The way most of us know cannoli is as a pastry-shop takeout dessert, several
pieces large or small piled into a decorative box and tied with a string. In
fact, that’s the visual of cannoli when it was “ready for its close-up” in The
Godfather, thus adding the post-Mafia-rubout instruction “Drop the gun,
take the cannoli” to America’s pop vocabulary.

All the same, it’s clear what happens in the film, as well as in a million
other occurrences. Cannoli are made by stuffing a tube of fried pastry with a
sweetened filling of flavored ricotta cheese. Over the hours the cannoli sit in
that box, the filling merges into the pastry, becoming what I always knew as
only okay. The experience of stopping for cannoli in Sicily is entirely
different.

In our case, we were shown to a table and ordered some coffee. In my broken
Italian, I made sure the place really had cannoli, since none was anywhere to
be seen. The manager went back to his podium, picked up the phone and launched
into a long, highly emotional conversation with the person at the other end. I
went over to him again, and tried again to confirm, possibly asking “How big is
the red pencil box?” – my Italian is that fluent. I gathered that our cannoli
were being created then and there, and that this happened down in the basement,
and that he would bring our treat to us very, very soon.

That he did. And since it had been filled only moments before, the pastry
and the filling were still distinct, the filling creamy and lush, the pastry
the very definition of crisp. It was clear to me, as I waxed eloquent (in
English this time) about how amazing these cannoli were, that the dramatic
textural contrast was the thing I’d been missing all along.

Like so many things in Sicily, cannoli are part of the legacy of Arab
conquest and occupation, the latter lasting from 827 to 1091. Who knows, there
might have been an old Arab saying, “Drop the scimitar, take the
cannoli.”

CANNOLI CHEESECAKE

As many Italian American families understand, you can’t get more Sicilian
than lemons and figs. Indeed, both are among the most popular trees planted in
Italian American backyards, wherever the climate is the least bit willing.
Mixing them as a marmalade into a lush cheesecake with crushed cannoli shells
for a crust is a Sicilian dream come true.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter a 9-inch springform pan or spray
generously with vegetable spray. Crush the cannoli shells in a food processor.
Add the butter, 2 tablespoons sugar and Marsala, processing into medium-fine
crumbs. Press the crumbs firmly and evenly onto the bottom of the pan and bake
for 10 minutes. Remove from the oven and let cool completely.

In a large bowl, using an electric mixer, beat the ricotta, cream cheese and
flour until well blended. Add the cream, marmalade, vanilla and almond extracts
and the orange juice, blending until smooth. Add the eggs 1 at a time, blending
only until incorporated. Pour the filling over the cooled crust and bake on the
middle rack for 1 hour and 15 minutes. Sprinkle the top with chocolate
chips, pressing them in lightly. Bake for 10 minutes more until chips are
starting to melt. Remove the pan from the oven and run a sharp around the edges
to loosen the cake.

Let cool gradually for about 2 hours atop the turned-off oven – this will help avoid cracking. Then cover, still in the springform, and refrigerate overnight. Cut in wedges and serve, with additional heated marmalade if desired and/or whipped cream. Serves 10.